


Get Away With It

by Littlewhitemouse



Category: Suikoden IV
Genre: CANON DIVERGENT BECAUSE I HADN'T FINISHED THE GAME YET WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS, M/M, WHAT'S UP THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, at having such a boner for such a horrible manchild, snowe slash lazlo more like lazlo slash rage, who let me internet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24068470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlewhitemouse/pseuds/Littlewhitemouse
Summary: Lazlo has spared this little bastard so many times.As he's standing there with the knife and a hundred people who won't question his decision ringing him round, he still doesn't know what his decision is.
Relationships: Lazlo/Snowe Vingerhut
Kudos: 2





	Get Away With It

**Author's Note:**

> Had a big ol' misunderstanding about how the timeline of the game functioned and wrote some kind of? broken canon ship-adjacent fic while in a two-hour-long food-service-induced rage. Couple thousand words of light kismesitude with left knife kink. Think of it as some kind of slight AU left just a bit outside of its context.

Oh, Lazlo was so tired of this. He was so goddamn tired of this.

He was tired of this happening, he was tired of having to handle it, he was tired of having to get rough, he was tired of having to be nice. He was at once hurt that Snowe had the callousness to attack him and that he had the ever fucking  _ gall  _ to believe he  _ could  _ attack him. He was distraught to watch Snowe humiliated, for the third of fourth time, sprayed with the blood of his crew and perfumed with the sea water that foamed up around him in the fire-scoured ship, miserable to see him desperate for one fucking victory, and hysterically fucking angry to hear him shouting orders, rung thin across the waters, to load cannons, tighten rigging, and attack. Attack Lazlo, as if he had any fucking right to. He was heart-sick to watch him pistol-whipped by one of Lazlo’s crew, dropped and bound, hands secured behind his back and cinched to a rope around his neck, he was livid to see him marching with his head held up anyway, his crew butchered and him still the picture of noble pride, sneering down at the pirates, as if he thought he had any honor left to mock them with. And goddamn, he really thought that he did.

It made Lazlo fucking angry to watch him. It made him feel hollow. It made him feel sick.

How did he still look like Snowe when he was marched up to Lazlo, center of the deck and surrounded on all sides by his crew? How did he still look like his brother? Who was this?

“Captain Vingerhut,” said Lazlo.

The low quiet of his voice forced everyone else to hush. They wouldn’t want to speak louder than him, nor would they miss hearing what Lazlo was about to say. The first time Lazlo had Snowe in captivity, he offered him a chance to start again, join him, and leave the past behind. Snowe spat in his face. Snowe spat in his fucking face and told him to act noble in front of his own band of lowlife and criminals, he knew better. Lazlo had sent him adrift.

The second time he had Snowe captured, he felt soft to him still. He didn’t want him to be killed even though they had chosen opposite sides in a war with a clearly correct side. He shoved him in a boat without conferring with anyone and told him to get out.

The third time, he blew up his ship, pitched him into the water, and did not look back.

He was fucking back again. He was fucking back again. Not dead, and he was still so fucking proud, and he was still acting like Lazlo had done something wrong. This man, who had thrown him to the sharks to escape what would have probably been a suspension for him. This heartless, compassionless, thoughtless copy of his penny-pinching, arrogant father. This fucking asshole.

He had already mourned him.

Snowe looked down his nose at him. His cheeks were flushed and his chest was heaving with exhaustion. He wasn’t wearing that ugly brocade this time—he was in something that looked almost reasonably like armor. Good heavens, he might have lifted a finger and fought this time. All the same, it was studded with golden buttons and steel buckles, with a tooled crest, because he was a fucking tool.

“Your masters haven’t gotten tired of supplying you with new ships and new coats yet?” Lazlo asked. “Isn’t it expensive for them?”

A low ripple of giggles. The tension was heavy, but obviously, his crew felt no fear here. “Isn’t their patience wearing thin with their coffers? Aren’t they tired of sending you out to not capture me yet?”

Snowe was turning red. He was trying to not reply. He was trying to act above him. He was trying to save face, probably. Probably he was nervous. He turned red like an apple, patchy, fetchingly mottled on skin still pale.

“Are they going to take you back this time?” Lazlo pressed him, ire swelling the longer he didn’t speak. “Do you want to chance it?”

“If you’re trying to get me to join you in your nest of vipers again, save your breath,” Snowe snapped. His voice was thinner and more strained than he wanted it to be. Lazlo felt a pulse of embarrassment, followed by anger.

“Oh. If you fucking think…” Lazlo took a single shaking breath. “Sorry. That invitation has expired.”

Lazlo reached out to Snowe, a little curiously. He wasn’t sure what he was about to do. It seems he was going to rest the fingertips of his left hand on Snowe’s collarbone. Not a threat… if it came from anyone else. He felt sickly satisfied when Snowe tensed.

“Then throw me overboard and be done with it. I detest to spend another minute on your ship.”

_ He detests to… _ fucking hell. He didn’t even used to speak like this!

Lazlo was always expressive. His fingers curled into a grip on Snowe’s shoulder when he spoke, because he was angry. “Are you trying to negotiate the method of your death? What a politician.”

Everyone laughed. Snowe’s eyes shimmered with fear before they frantically steadied themselves again. He didn’t think he was going to die. He really didn’t think he was going to die. Lazlo didn’t think Snowe was going to die either. The thought of Snowe thrown down on the deck, his blood pouring into the veins of the wood, it made his heart beat with fear. Terror. But Lazlo wasn’t sure Snowe was going to stay alive either.

How could he excuse it? After attacking him four fucking times with the intent to kill his men, wreck his ship, bring Lazlo himself almost certainly to a death by hanging. How could he excuse it?

He wasn’t responding again.

“You think you can weasel your way out of it? Do you think you can pay me? Do you think I want to look merciful to my crew? Are you depending on my feelings for you?”

He didn’t bother to say so quietly. Let it be uncomfortable for everyone else. It was agony for him. Snowe himself flinched away. Good. He hated it and it felt good. “Oh, but I’ve got an idea,” he said. He tightened his grip on Snowe, moving his hand to his neck. Really, he was trying to hold him still, but he could feel Snowe’s heart immediately start pounding under his hand. Panic.  _ He _ could feel it. Panic. Mortal fear. Anxiety and stress. Exhaustion. Sadness.

An old sadness. A heavy one. Sadness in a numbing cocktail with jealousy, self-loathing, and confusion. It was like an echo ringing over the sea.

Lazlo had pulled a knife out of his boot and straightened back up. Snowe’s eyes were wide with their huge, awful emotions. He had a few bad habits that cropped up one  _ he _ zeroed in on someone. That uncomfortable stare he heard he had was one. He didn’t think Snowe liked what he was seeing in his eyes, because his heart hammered again, like a sword at a forge. Lazlo lifted the knife to the height of his throat.

“Hold him up, Kika.”

No argument.

The whining began when she had Snowe braced. Kika was taller than him, no surprise. That quiet and awful whining, like a scared dog. It came out of humans who were beginning to believe that they were about to die. Lazlo curled his left hand into the front flap of Snowe’s coat, slowly parting the sides. The shirt underneath had nice golden buttons too. His right hand adjusted itself on the knife.

He sliced the top button of Snowe’s coat off suddenly, carving through the threads. Snowe shrieked an incredibly short, stifled shriek, curdled terror he somehow swallowed down. He went to panting, horrified and confused, as he watched Lazlo toss the golden button in his hand.

“Couple of carats,” Lazlo muttered. “That’ll start your payments for the massive damage done to Iliya.”

He tossed it blindly over his shoulder. He heard a short scramble to catch it and no sound of gold hitting the deck. He’d be damned if he ever heard gold actually hit the deck before being caught on this ship. He grabbed Snowe again, forcefully, to make his breath hitch. He sheared off the next button, and the next one after that. “The people of Na-Nal and Nay have a lot of holes in their economy now that Kooluk soldiers are _ slaughtering _ their able-bodied men,” he continued, “so that’ll help. Let’s give them this too.” He cut off the buckles that fastened the coat, well-tooled steel, surely worth something. The coat sagged open, revealing his shirt.

“Now…. Let’s see… one, two… hmm hmm… ten? What the hell does a shirt need ten golden buttons for?” Lazlo started at the top, slicing off buttons one by one, naming another small island with each one, another private, cozy little home in the wide ocean that this war had broken or destroyed. He heard himself saying names of the dead. The shirt, tailored to Snowe’s body, fit snugly, and the blade of the knife felt the spasms in his stomach as Lazlo cut closer and closer. When he thrashed, unable to hold fear of the knife at bay, Lazlo cut into him, eating through a couple layers of skin.

In the end he was bare-chested and red, blood dripping down to his pants, muscles trembling with the effort to stay standing, aided by Kika’s grip on his bound forearms. Lazlo removed the last button, barely above the hem of his pants, and tossed it above the shoulder. “And that’s for Elenor and her island, specifically, since you’ve cost her so many years of her already advanced life.”

“Hand that over, sonny,” he heard Elenor bark at some unfortunate crew member, “you heard him.”

Lazlo was surprised that Snowe still had nothing to say to him. But when he looked up at his face he was that Snowe was expending the effort of his mind to keep his fear at bay, to not tremble cry, or faint, to remain at least standing solid, the bare minimum of respectability.

It was laughable. When they were ten, Lazlo had once watched him bawl for an hour about a schoolyard dispute. Yeah, right.

But where he was standing, he could see that the button of his pants—listen to fucking this, ladies and gentlemen, even the button of his fucking pants was gold and probably worth something. Lazlo couldn’t tell if it was just plated or real gold, but it was coming off. Every fucking muscle in Snowe’s body tensed as Lazlo steadied a knife on his hip, gently tapping the hipbone as he planned his cut, an unstoppable grin twitching on his face. He swung it over and cut it off, just once, perfectly, and the button fell into his hand.

Standing, he pocketed it. “And the acting monarch of Obel—me, just in case you forgot—thanks you kindly for the slight contribution to the rebuilding projects we’re forced to undertake since your people fucking invaded and drove business to the fucking ground.”

Snowe was glaring at him with fire-heat. He was horribly disheveled now, clothes falling off, blood-stained, held up by the ropes which bound him mercilessly.

It was fun, this way. Lazlo liked to see him humiliated without having to suffer seeing him in physical pain. He deserved it, didn’t he? Putting personal angst aside, as if it could be put aside, his actions had caused a lot of deaths. Human lives are priceless, not even counting the damage done to so many islands. He deserved it. A little bit of punishment.

Lazlo could feel his hands curl together. “You understand, right? You have a lot to pay for. That’s what you understand, right?”

“You— you—”

Snowe couldn’t get out what he wanted to say to him. Lazlo could see he was burning with anger. He could see he was choked up with fear. He didn’t know what else.

His fear made him feel insane.

“Get him—” he reconsidered after he started shouting. What was appropriate? What could he do? What did he have to do? “No,” he said out loud. He paced a half step, faced away from Snowe. The sea was glittering with golden sunlight. The world is so distractingly beautiful when you’re trying not to think. “No, no.” He half turned, turned back, and observed his brother again.

His anger was boiling away everything else, it seemed. He had been startled, he had been frightened, but just maybe, he was no longer afraid. If Snowe wasn’t afraid… if Lazlo truly believed he wasn’t afraid…

“Lock him into my quarters.”

“With plea—what?” Kika asked.

He leaned in to her, Snowe bound between them. “Corpses don’t pay off debts,” he whispered, depending on the sea breeze to keep his rationale between himself and Kika. “I don’t think locking him into a prison cell would be a good idea.”

Their cells were public access, meant to encourage gawking and humiliation. Kika slowly tipped her head onto her shoulder. She understood. She tended to make bodies instead of keep prisoners herself, but she respected Lazlo’s methods. They had talked about this, at length, in bed.

“And what’s wrong with… an empty room?”

“My crew respects my space.”

Lazlo knew she wasn’t happy. He could tell she accepted it anyway. She knew there was more to his decision. He had shown his hand just by lowering his voice. He wondered what she understood… he raced to remember what he had told her, in moments of weakness, in the dark… she didn’t say anything.

Snowe, too, had gone into uneasy silence at the change of direction in the script. Though it was easy before, now, Lazlo found it hard to look at him.

His eyes, skirting around his white hair, his pinched face, his bright eyes, saw pain, pulsed with pain. Anxiety buzzed backwards through his mind, from his eyes, through his skull, foamed into bitterness, scoured the shore, leaving something pale, worn, and tired. He felt the regret and anxiety building, he knew and hated it. Snowe—Snowe—

What could he do? What could he do? What could he excuse? What would they accept? What could he accept? What could _ he _ accept?

He needed time. He needed. To calm down. Find his feet. The crowd rung around him. Before he had to…

“Alright, thanks to the little prince, we’ve got a plan to revise,” Lazlo shouted, turning his back on Snowe. His heart hammered. “Into the meeting room. You know if you’re suppose to be there. Once we’ve got a schedule ironed out and a course plotted, then we’ll have time to settle this.”

“And how are we going to settle this?” Someone dared ask.

Elenor. Elenor dared ask. Because she could.

What could he do? What could he do?

“With a bleeding back,” he said. “Or perhaps a bleeding neck.” He began to walk through the crowd, silencing the conversation. “Or perhaps something else.  _ We’ll see.” _

If he put it into his own hands. As the captain. Then they had to accept his choice.

Then they had to. But. He would talk to Snowe first. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t His mind would change. He didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know who Snowe was any more. He’d grow weak. He couldn’t take it. He’d feel so—so—but the temptation was too great. If he could talk to Snowe in private, if they could be alone together—the temptation was too great. He didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to make this choice.

But if he did it, they would have to accept it. If he did it, he could control it. If he punished Snowe himself… then no one else would have the right to. Because this was his ship, his castle, and his prison, and his command was law. He could declare war, demand death, command the destruction of ships, and he could even save someone, and no one could stop him.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh. One more thing. I always saw Punishment as male for some reason. Since I already had so many male pronouns bouncing around, I made Punishment 'he' and 'him' in italics.


End file.
